my face an' clutch at the grasses like mad to keep from
pitchin' clean out into space. It _was_ a drop, all right,--two
hundred foot or more o' sheer cliff.

"An' the bear was not thirty yards behind me.

"I looked at the bear, as I laid there clutchin' the grass-roots. Then
I looked down over the edge. I didn't feel frightened exactly, so fur;
didn't _know_ enough, maybe, to be _frightened_ of _any_ animal. But
jest at this point I was mighty anxious. You'll believe, then, it was
kind o' good to me to see, right below, maybe twenty foot down, a
little pocket of a ledge full o' grass an' blossomin' weeds. There was
no time to calculate. I could let myself drop, an' maybe, if I had
luck, I could stop where I fell, in the pocket, instead of bouncin'
out an' down, to be smashed into flinders. Or, on the other hand, I
could stay where I was, an' be ripped into leetle frayed ravellin's by
the bear; an' that would be in about three seconds, at the rate he was
comin'. Well, I let myself over the edge till I jest hung by the
fingers, an' then dropped, smooth as I could, down the rock face, kind
of clutchin' at every leetle knob as I went to check the fall. I lit
true in the pocket, an' I lit pretty hard, as ye might know, but not
hard enough to knock the wits out o' me, the grass an' weeds bein'
fairly soft. An' clawin' out desperate with both hands, I caught, an'
stayed put. Some dirt an' stones come down, kind o' smart, on my head,
an' when they'd stopped I looked up. There was the bear, his big head
stuck down, with one ugly paw hangin' over beside it, starin' at me. I
was so tickled at havin' fooled him, I didn't think o' the hole I was
in, but sez to him, saucy as you please, 'Thou art so near, an' yet so
far.' At this he give a grunt, which might have meant anything, an'
disappeared.

"'Ye know enough to know when you're euchred,' says I. An' then I
turned to considerin' the place I was in, an' how I was to git out of
it.

"To git out of it, indeed! The more I considered, the more I wondered
how I'd ever managed to stay in it. It wasn't bigger than three foot
by two, or two an' a half, maybe, in width, out from the cliff-face.
On my left, as I sat with my back agin the cliff, a wall o' rock ran
out straight, closin' off the pocket to that side clean an' sharp,
though with a leetle kind of a roughness, so to speak--nothin' more
than a roughness--which I calculated _might_ do, on a pinch, fer me
to hang on to if I wan